Blog

Robert Wood Johnson study on egg donor satisfaction

Posted On November 1st, 2010

Here is a positive and accurate article on egg donation, demonstrating that egg donors find the experience rewarding: Egg donors happy they helped, small study finds.  An excerpt from the article:

“Up until now we’ve known that donors are by and large very satisfied by their experience when it takes place, and now we see that for the vast majority the positive experience persists.”

– Andrea M. Braverman, director of complementary and alternative medicine at Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey in Morristown

 

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Sanford Benardo Speaks at Albany Law School

Posted On October 8th, 2010

Sanford M. Benardo will be speaking at the Albany Law School on October 28.  The Albany Law Journal of Science and Technology has dedicated its 20th anniversary symposium to assisted reproductive technology and Sanford’s talk will cover the concerns of recipients and concerns of donors in egg donor contracts.

Click here for more info.  (The symposium can always be viewed live via web.)

 

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The latest on Egg Donor Compensation

Posted On May 12th, 2010

Yet another reaction to the Hastings Center report, this time in the New York Times (“Payment Offers to Egg Donors Prompt Scrutiny“).

Here’s the shocker: people are willing to pay more for highly desirable egg donors! This is hardly news, although it is reported as such.

These outrageous offers get publicity, but they are far from the mainstream, and in fact, probably bogus. For many recipients, compensation within the ethical limits can be a hardship.

Any SART and ASRM registered clinic pledges to abide by the guidelines of these organizations. If a clinic works with an agency donor, the clinic should make sure that the agency complies with these guidelines as well. Some clinics require a letter from us testifying to our compliance. Plenty of agencies are members of SART, even though the article implies otherwise.

 

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Fertility Laws in the US vs Canada

Posted On March 25th, 2010

The following is a response to “The Human Egg Trade (How Canada’s Fertility Laws are failing donors, doctors, and parents)”.

The situation in Canada demonstrates how a lack of clear regulations for egg donation has a ripple effect of deviance from standard protocols in other parts of the process. The egg donation arrangement where a young woman was coerced to donate for an unofficial compensation even after having a failed cycle which produced no viable embryos and caused her painful hyperstimulation, was handled badly at every step, starting with egg donor/recipient relations to the medical procedure. What doctor would agree to cycle an egg donor after her last retrieval was so poor?

Doctors in the US scrupulously pore over egg donors’ records, and if there are any concerns she would not be allowed to donate again. Perhaps it is the ready availability of so many good candidates in the US that allows American doctors to be so picky. Doctors also have their own success rates at stake, which they need to maintain to attract patients.

The egg donation business in the US shows how a sensibly regulated free market works to the advantage of all, especially compared with Canada’s grey market or the UK, where they are so skittish that compensated donation is completely banned.

 

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